Sleeping with the Enemy in the 'War On Women'
It wasn't long ago that Barack Obama's supporters pointed to his successful campaign as proof of his executive ability, responding to truthful claims he had no executive experience. As this year's flailing campaign matches his amateurish handling of the presidency, and the third Recovery Summer shows the US economy in worse shape than it was before all this recovering took place, Democratic women are manning their enemy's ramparts while preposterously claiming it is the Republicans who are waging a "war on women".
Governor Romney has correctly noted that 92.3% of the jobs lost under Obama were women's jobs. But in an effort to distract from the fact that their mishandling of the economy has had dire affects on the lives of women, Democrats plan to highlight at their convention Sandra Fluke to remind us that Obamacare will provide women with "free" contraceptives. You'd have to be even more innumerate than the President is to believe that a benefit worth about $9 a month -which you will in fact be paying for through that benighted legislation-beats the opportunity to earn a living.
And best of all, the show the "War on Women" will not only feature Fluke, but as well, Caroline Kennedy and Bill Clinton. In case you are ignorant of recent history, Jack Cashill kindly has reminded us of the way the Kennedy men and Clinton treated women. Perhaps the names of women victims of Clinton and the Kennedys should be run as a chyron under the broadcasts for those with faltering recollections.
Do women need extra assistance from the government now?
I don't think so. In fact like many I think the pendulum has swung too far and needs to be righted. (See Christine Hoff Sommers Who Stole Feminism?). These days there really is a War on Men, especially White Men . My friend Jane Woodworth, who organized a tea party in Massachusetts, runs her own firm and co-hosts an weekly radio show "Fun with Dick and Jane," apologizes for tooting her own horn in this post, but I repeat it because I think it accurately reflects the experience of many women of her generation.
I really want to know more about this war on women? Is it something new? Cause I recall another iteration of it.
I started working in the 2nd grade (giving out milk and cookies to get mine free). NO one told me a boy should have the job. I worked every year after that. I worked in the cafeteria, I babysat all through high school. I don't know of any boys who had got jobs babysitting. I was even allowed to dish out ice cream to hungry customers.
I went to college, I can't remember any problem being female in getting in. I can't even remember worrying about it. I certainly was allowed to work the whole time I was at college, both at the school and in the community. No one ever told me I didn't have the correct anatomy to bag groceries or wait on tables.
Of course it all changed when I got out. I needed a job. I applied to be a claims adjuster. Liberty Mutual had recently been told they had to let women be claims adjusters. Who knows if some guy was more qualified than I? But times were different so they put me in the front of the line. 2 years later I was asked to apply to be a Risk Manager in a growing software company. They wanted a woman because the 2 other people in the department were men. I have no idea how many resumes they got from qualified men. But I went straight to the front of the line.
I got into MBA school - which I truly sucked at. Some guy would probably have done better. And then I applied to law school. The fact that I was both older (by then) and a woman, guaranteed my acceptance. I couldn't hold a candle to either the men or women who were there straight out of college. They had to have much better credentials just to get accepted. I only had to be female and old. I was apparently the face of past discrimination, and clearly deserved to go to the front of the line over and over again.
I was able to get a job in a law firm during my first year - I'm pretty sure that was based on my resume, which I'm pretty sure was helped by the facts I stated above. That firm hired me out of law school and 2 years later I started my own firm. I had an awful lot of clients who wanted a female litigator because they were harder to come by. That woman thing was such a disadvantage.
So someone tell me more about this war. Cause I don't get it.
And I apologize in advance for posting my resume.
I went to college and law school a few years before Jane and my experience was less beneficent by a long shot, but the tide has certainly turned, as another friend, JMH observes:
Women's options really were a lot more limited, both professionally and socially, when I was growing up, and women had to break through a lot of constraints before the idea of a glass ceiling even kicked in. There have always been women who managed to chart their own courses, but the original women's movement, with all its warts, was truly a paradigm shifting force for the rest of us. They turned into their own worst enemies, alas, after they won the war and didn't put down their weapons.
In things like college admissions, graduation rates, professional hires, women are simply an advantaged class these days and it's dishonest to pretend otherwise.
In addition to sharing the podium in Charlotte with one of the worst misogynists of our age and the family representative of a string of them, the Democratic women who agitate under the banner of Code Pink who regularly tart themselves up to look like vaginas plan to send pictures of their vaginas to Republican convention goers. I bet that will really appeal to women voters. (One wonders how Code Pink would be treated by the Palestinians whose cause they propagandize for. Why not dress like vaginas and parade through the streets of Gaza and let us know how it went?)
Undoubtedly to provide some contrast, the media which will surely broadcast all the ninnies yapping at the Democratic convention and give Code Pink lots of play have made it clear that they will not cover Anne Romney's address to the Republican convention. Better to let the audience think all the women are on the left side of the fence I suppose.
Why have the Democrats with no viable plans to advance as a campaign plank, chosen, in Rush Limbaugh's words, to make their convention about "death and taxes"?
The Democrats are actually going to turn their convention into a celebration of abortion.
They think that they're on to something so powerful and so big here. They think the "social issues" are death for the Republicans and they think that this is a godsend. It's gonna be woman after woman after woman, and it's gonna be, "Abortion, abortion, abortion! Contraception, contraception, contraception!" It is gonna be the Democrat Party's 30-year-old playbook every night at their convention. So this, as far as I'm concerned -- if they follow through with this -- will officially make them the party of death and taxes.
They hope to capitalize on the unfortunate choice of words of Todd Akin, a candidate for Senate from Missouri who played into their hands by justifying his belief that even rape doesn't justify abortion, adding that such acts rarely end in pregnancy anyhow.
It's true that he may have hurt his chances in HIS election with his clumsy iteration-though it's a bit early to say because his opponent Claire McCaskill is not well liked and the issue is still being overplayed. But as Rich Lowry observes, even if the Akin stumble costs the Republicans a sure Senate pickup the hope of a Republican Senate is far from lost.
Are American women so daft that they'll trade their economic futures and that of their children for a man so desperate to win and so devoid of respect for human life that he repeatedly voted to permit a form of infanticide?
Obama has offered deceptive explanations of his own pro-abortion legislative work, while simultaneously accusing his pro-life opponents of being dishonest. More important, Obama's record as a state senator was not merely pro-choice, but radically pro-abortion. His voting record indicates that he does not believe infants deserve protection even once they have emerged from the womb if they are deemed to be below the age of viability, and he did in fact, three times, vote to keep a form of infanticide legal.
This jockeying for unearned special privileges including the right to kill born alive children reminds me of a Shel Silverstein poem in his wonderful book "Light in the Attic." It's about a girl named Pamela Purse who always demanded special privileges because of her sex. It didn't end well for her either:
When we went off on our jungle trip.
Pamela Purse said her thirst was worse
And guzzled our water, every sip.
And when we got grabbed by that wild savage band,
Who tied us together and made us all stand
In a long line in front of the King of the land-
A cannibal known as Fry-'Em-Up Dan,
Who sat on his throne in a bib so grand
With a lick of his lips and a fork in his hand,
As he tried to decide who'd be first in the pan-
From back of the line, in that shrill voice of hers,
Pamela Purse yelled, "Ladies first."